Betrayer Announced

New developer blackpowder games announces
Betrayer, an upcoming
single-player first-person shooter set in colonial America that features the
requisite zombies in the form of undead conquistadors. This is coming from a
team that includes six veterans of F.E.A.R. and No One Lives Forever
development back in their
days with Monolith, including Shogo, NOLF, and F.E.A.R.
lead designer Craig Hubbard.
PC Gamer has some details and hands-on impressions of the "eerie" game along
with screenshots and a
gameplay trailer
showing off its unusual art direction, where most everything is starkly
black or white (lacking even grayscale), with the occasional splash of
red. The plan is to begin offering the game via Steam Early Access on August
14th, and in the meantime we can get a sense of what this is about through the
words of PC Gamer:

Betrayer doesn’t fit neatly into an existing genre. On
the surface, it’s an FPS set in open, pristine American wilderness that happens
to be crawling with undead conquistadors. But the game’s monochromatic art
direction, gloomy tone, and sense of mystery distinguish it from other indie and
horror projects.

The story of Betrayer is expressed through scattered clues—gravestone
engravings, artifacts, notes, and other evidence that you find in the world.
Assembling these clues pieces together the truth of what happened to an
abandoned British settlement. One of colonial history’s greatest mysteries, the
Roanoke colony, was among the inspirations for this premise, says creative lead
Craig Hubbard. “The social situation of that time was really interesting,” says
Hubbard, formerly the lead designer on Shogo: Mobile Armor Division, F.E.A.R.,
and the NOLF series. “I don’t know if you’ve read about what it was like to be
in the Pilgrim colonies, like if you broke the law, but they’d like… pile stones
on you until you died. It was just brutal and horrific and that’s great subject
matter for an atmospheric and eerie game.”